AWOL Soldiers’ Cross-Country Trip Turns Deadly

[MUSIC] >> Search for it, search for something from your head. >> Open back to you. >> Do you have any sympathy or sadness or pain or regret about what you've done? [MUSIC] >> Sure thing? >> No. [MUSIC] >> On you, from your left. >> It was almost a week after you died because of what you started to smell of it. [MUSIC] >> Is that here a B4 mission? [MUSIC] Spread out. >> In July 2025, Georgia law enforcement and the US military are pursuing an active warrant for the arrest of 23 year old Rainer Joyner. Joyner was an Army soldier stationed in Fort Benning, Georgia. In the summer of 2025, Joyner and his roommate, 22 year old David DeGrote, deserted their military obligations and fled roughly 1,400 miles west to Joyner's family property in Towels County, New Mexico. But first, the AWOL soldiers drove north to Virginia to pick up their friend and former Comrade Matthew McLaughlin. Out of the three men, Joyner and DeGrote have a closer bond. >> They both known each other for a long time in the military. Both great dads got it, so we bonded up with that. He has no logic sibling to lift, so he claims he has to select his younger brother. >> Unlike his comrades, McLaughlin had been honorably discharged from the military. But after his service, he struggled with drug addiction. He thought leaving his hometown for a fresh start out west with his friends might have been the push he needed to get clean. >> But Matthew McLaughlin's fresh start may never come to fruition. Because by late July, he goes missing. McLaughlin's family and friends back home knew that he had left New Mexico and gone to Colorado for a short period of time in July to take care of something with the VA. But once he returned back to New Mexico, they stopped hearing from him. On July 31, his family files a missing person's report. McLaughlin's mother, Rensacar, and drives to New Mexico from Virginia in hopes of finding her son, but she comes up empty. She tells officers that McLaughlin should be with his former military buddies, Reiner Joyner and David DeGrote. Now that the military deserters are implicated in a missing person's case, officers are doubly motivated to track them down. When a search of the Joyner's Trist Piesgerat's family property on August 17, turns up no signs of Matthew McLaughlin or the men he was last seen with. How is County Law Enforcement and the U.S. military take matters into their own hands? "Search for search warrant up in the door." "Search warrant to search warrant up in the door." "Search warrant to search warrant up in the door." Inside the home, detectives find an army-issued duffel bag and a black box with AR magazines and ammunition. Detectives prepare for the possibility that Rainer Joyner and David DeGroat are armed. They get out of the vehicle slowly with their hands up they walk toward military snipers and Taos County law enforcement with a warrant for military desertion which is a crime both men are put in handcuffs. As the sun sets, police prepare to take Joyner and DeGroat back to the station for interviews. The main thing they want to know where is Matthew McLaughlin and why wasn't he in the truck with them? "This paper, using those pants, gentlemen, I want you to write me a personal statement, a statement from you describing everything involved in this incident from beginning to end, to write now what we're going to write down as they tell us if you humanly can." Detectives are shocked by the gruesome truth Joyner scrolls on the page. Starting from July 25th, roughly 1807pm, I joined a Rainer confronted Matt on the right most path leading to the house about 600 meters away. When I confronted Matt, I asked him to explain why he was spreading rumors about me and with drugs, strangers over to the house, he, Matt in parentheses, said that I didn't come up there often enough, so it was basically his place and a dark state of mind. I shot him with the Springfield St. AR rifle, I was carrying after shooting him, I dragged his body to a tree 40 meters away on the left side of the road. As investigators had begun to suspect, Matt McLaughlin isn't missing. He was murdered by two men masquerading as his friends. The only question now is why? I don't know, I got pissed off and decided to f**k you, I'm not going to give you the chance to f**k you yet, so I shot him. I'm not going to give you the chance to f**k you yet, so I'm not going to give you the chance to f**k you yet. While Joyner bought the supplies needed to dispose of the evidence, McLaughlin's body laid decomposing in the 85 degree heat. David DeGro tells detectives, it's true, Rainer Joyner shot Matthew McLaughlin and disposed of his body, but he didn't shoot him in a fit of rage. According to DeGro, Joyner had premeditated McLaughlin's murder for weeks. From the beginning to the end, I need every possible detail that you have in reference to the situation. So I would say it was for what Joyner was thinking, it was pre-plotted beforehand, because I would tell him about Matt still had a drug habit and he was still talking f**king making rumors, everything just kind of pissed off Joyner, so several occasions. I told him, hey, no, don't kill him, just kick him off the property or something, or get him to start talking to him again. To the point where he eventually came down to the point where he said that he was going to go to the hospital. the plan for Matt to get killed. I never planned to actually kill him and the sense of like it wasn't cremated either. When I went up there I was giving him one last chance to fix things. Matthew was over in Colorado, dealing with the VA, getting all that stuff done for himself, and to go grocery store, pick up groceries. I wanted to go walk with him as we walked up the road, at the card carrying the groceries of everything. As we got to an intersection a shot rang out, Matt got shot and is right willing from joins rifle. Specifically he's AR-15. Matt not knowing what's happening, he did say I got shot and he starts to freak out, then join her, come somewhere on the corner with hyperreda. He sticks it to his face and shoots him in the jaw, which faces eyes swell up. He starts to choke but his blood as he hits the floor. And then he hovers over him with an execution shot and gets him right on the temple. Describe as much deal as you can. What made you make the decision to kill Matthew? Honestly, it was not a hard decision to reach for me, I already got what I considered plenty of warnings before. OK, what do you mean by that? Warrings. I've done a thing before, like I told you guys already, and I told you, I've done a thing before, if it ever was violent, he had to do everything was fine. I don't know if there was, I was not alive. A little less than a month before this all happened. So Matt would constantly be talking a lot of sh*t out of the same way. Oh, he doesn't know it is out of here. We've been out here for four months, he hasn't been out here and said news. He doesn't show up anymore, this isn't his sh*t house. You don't have to listen to him. I also created a column before about a week before this all happened, more or less. We've also been at Walmart because we haven't been here. I've talked to him, it's like, I can't hear you still. I'm still kind of looking up with the sh*t. He's like, oh it's not, I'm just just, oh it's fine, man, it's fine. I'm just, you know, work, work, sh*t. I'm just saying, okay, I get that. I understand. I can't work, sh*t, work, sh*t, work, sh*t, work, sh*t. So you can't go back to what you were before if I can, you know, for all this. Yeah, you can't just, I can't do it. I can put up with that sh*t. I don't, I don't regret what I did. You know what I'm saying? And I, I don't f*cking regret what I did. That wasn't the same thing I started with, like I said before. But to grow in sis, that Matthew McLaughlin's murder was planned and that Joyner talked about it for weeks and even proposed different ways to catch McLaughlin by surprise. I would say July 25th is the execute day. Okay, cool. It's more just a murmur of a preplot than me. So my one question for you, is I want you to explain to me the plan that you're talking about? A plan to kill Matt, that Joyner made. Okay. So this idea was initially he was going to come up the road that we were going to have and he was going to try to stamp him with his 308 from a distance and then his plan changed when Matt said he was getting dropped out from the other road. So then Joyner's idea was he was going to take my beretta so he can have a sidearm and then he grabbed his AR and then waited in the bushes for us to come up and told me to stick to one side of the road and to be very allowed when I'm near the area. So when he sees Matt come up on the side despite how dark it is, he doesn't need to worry about who it is. When I was discussed previously, was it, how was it discussed? It was discussed in person because he showed up a a little bit beforehand when Matt wasn't there to just try to talk about it because he figured we're going to be tapped in the back of that no matter what. In both versions of the story, Joyner's cold and merciless attitude toward murdering his friend remains the same. I'm there when Michael Deland, I go to that spot, cut off his and in hands, back him up, put him in the harbor freight bucket, drove back in the mountain, that next Wednesday, which I think was about the 30th, 31st, the late Wednesday night, the found my house in Oregon, started to expedite the process, cut off his lower legs and arms, hands, back them up, set things aside and bagged up his torso. Sit, take it all back down, make do another thing to shift, that was for the road to take the same house of the road. McLaughlin's limbs and torso were placed in separate bags, discarded along the side of a highway. Investigators found Matthew McLaughlin's head in another bag. The weapon used was a sledge, axe-hand, a sledgehammer, but the axe head on it, and bought it on the store specifically for that purpose. Um, from there, for how much, everything on that's pretty much accurate, but you know, bought a few days later, but it's the tool, so I can chop them up. And why, why did you decide to chop them up? To join our dismembering Matthew McLaughlin's body after killing him was the clear next step, less obvious to investigators is why DeGroat helped him with it. He found out that I was talking about it, and I'm pretty sure I would get an end cap in it as well, had the same fear as Matt. What makes you so fearful of joiner? It's because I know he's capable of doing it just because just because he says it also means he can do it. You provide some specific instructions to David, can you describe those instructions to me? No, I mean, I made a hole in the bag. Well, four. Chop them up. Just in case body blower, anything like that, maybe the body will fall apart, make sure. Okay. He wanted me to hold the bags, so he could dump the body parts and say he can make sure my DNA was on the bags as well. He said you're going to join me or you're going to get this in theaters, Matt, as he did to help me with this body if you like it or not. Before sitting down together, Reiner joiner led detectives to two sites along Highway 64 where he dumped Matthew McLaughlin's remains. But when police arrived there, it appeared some pieces of McLaughlin's body were missing. Did you just start just from dismembering Matt before or after I called you guys to ask where it was going? It was beforehand, before the first initial call for the missing person's report. He already had no head and hands by that point. How long did it take you guys to dismember the body? He threw away the last piece around the last week. Which was the torso and a leg part. But there's no meat on it. It was just nothing but ribs and spine hips. Can you tell me about the axe rope and how many bags for buckets are out there? Like I said, I don't know why you guys thought that there should have been at least. The first slide you guys have to have should have only been the bucket and then the next stop should have been. It should have been three bags. The next stop should have been three bags. Yes, it should have been three bags. I was nothing but a mom. Did you guys run to that? I don't know what the f*** I'm going to be able to pack so that's where I bought them. And I do appreciate the fact that you took us to both locations and that you were honest with us about the bodies. What was the final straw? What made you make the decision that, hey, I'm going to kill my friend. I'm going to set him up and I'm going to kill him. What made you choose that path at the end of everything? Nothing I said before in a while, I don't f***ing. I don't put up with f***ing like that. I put up with f***ing like that again. I give him a chance of f***ing a chance. And every time we're just f***ing, we might as well just act the way it's f***ing fake about it. Now that the story of Matthew McLaughlin's cold-blooded murder has been told, investigators have a chance to ask his killer the question that's been at the forefront of their mind since the very beginning. Does he have any remorse? Then he chopped his body up, never should dispose of it. Do you have any sympathy or sadness or pain or regret about what you've done? Truthfully? No. Like I said, I wasn't the same guy I served with. 23-year-old Rainer Joyner is charged with first-degree murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated battery, assault with intent to commit a violent felony, conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with evidence. For his role in the crime, 22-year-old David DeGroote also faces charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with evidence. In September 2024, a judge orders the men to remain in a Taos County jail, as they await trial for the murder and dismemberment of Army veteran Matthew McLaughlin. Matthew McLaughlin's family has a go-fun me to help cover the remaining costs from their search for him over the summer. The link is in the description. For long crime investigates, I'm Kristen Thorn. [Music]